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Release Date: 2008-07-01
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| Features• ISBN13: 9780061231773
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• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
A Shadow of its Former GloriesRead with full engagement. Such is Thubron's elegant prose; the acute perceptions of his fellow travellers and of those inhabiting the areas through which he traverses. Dabblings of historic reference, sufficient to ground the reader, detain them in the area for about as long as Thubron is in the place himself. This isn't the first book I've read about the road. But it is the sweetest bit of writing. However, as a primer for emulating his journey, it's probably a deterrent. Even by his own admission, things in the various economies and social structures have deteriorated since his previous visit. The attractions of Isfahan, Samarkand, Bokara and the rest, in short, the reasons I might wish to go into these regions, seem far less aluring under the weight of contemporary developments. I might settle for a re-read, instead!
Thubron's Journey brings central Asia homeShadow of the Silk Road is an excellent journey through present-day Asia, with informative historical discussion overlap. Greg Mortenson mentions Thubron's book several times in his new Stones Into Schools. What a brave mission the author took to write this memoir!
Lucinda Tavernise
Granville, MA
Feb.1, 2010
Good, but only if you like travel writingI have a soft spot in my heart for anyone who travels to Central Asia and writes about the region's people. If you intend to travel to this part of the world, this is a good book to buy if you like travel writing. Another great book is The Opportunists by Yohann de Silva. Its a fiction/thriller that presents modern day Uzbekistan through a really interesting page-turner. The story is fiction but the context is 100% accurate. Here's a link: The Opportunists: A Novel
Thubron - a master of the travel essayist's craft"I feel like a stray animal. The face in the mirror belongs somewhere else. For a sad instant I mistake it for my father's. But it seems startlingly solid now: not the refinement of eyes and ears I had imagined on my journey. I see features harsher than mine, or his. A wind-tan has darkened them since China. The eyes are hung with tired crescents. One tooth is chipped, so that smiling is a qualified event. And my fingernails are still jagged from climbing Maimundiz. As I fall asleep between white sheets, I feel surprised that anyone ever talked to me, belatedly grateful." - Author Colin Thubron at the western terminus of the Silk Road
For the imaginative and adventurous mired in the daily drudge, travel essays can provide escape. They've always been my great diversion, leading me to places I shall never see. And travel essays range from the moronically superficial (The Ridiculous Race by Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran) to the humorously informative (anything by Iowa's treasure, Bill Bryson, e.g. Notes from a Small Island) to the cleverly unusual (Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast (Radio 4 Book of the Week) by Charlie Connelly) to the classic. SHADOW OF THE SILK ROAD certainly qualifies in the last category.
Here, Thubron retraces the ancient trading route, the Silk Road, roughly 7,000 miles from Xian in central China west across that country's vastness on a path between the mountains of Tibet and the deserts to the north to Kyrgyzstan, then through Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, finishing at the ancient, ruined port of Seleucia Pierea on the Mediterranean.
Thubron has traveled this road before in The Silk Road: Beyond the Celestial Kingdom and The Lost Heart of Asia (P.S.). Colin takes this latest journey in the years 2003-2004. His love for the lands he traverses - more specifically, an affection for their histories, perhaps - shows in the tenor of his narrative, which approaches journalistic reporting and which, while never humorous, at times is almost lyrical.
"Outside (his hotel room in vaguely menacing Maimana, Afghanistan) there was no sound but the scraping of the pine trees in the wind. Danger was cumulative, of course, it crept up step by step half-noticed as your journey took you deeper, farther. Until you woke up at night in a place beyond help."
SHADOW OF THE SILK ROAD includes 4 useful maps depicting Colin's route. A photo section would have been most welcome, but it's the infrequent travel essay that includes such so I've ceased expecting one. Indeed, the absence of a camera in the author's possession eased his way through at least one tense border crossing.
Periodically in the text, Thubron engages in a mental conversation with an imaginary Sogdian trader of old. Drifting towards sleep in his Antioch hotel room near the last stop of his journey, Colin's fantasy travel companion gives voice to an inner truth which perhaps had relevance when the author wrote the book, at which time he was in his mid-60s:
"At first, when you're young, each place you come to is poorer than the place ahead, which you do not yet know. The other is extraordinary, beautiful. So you go on, perhaps for many years. You go on until you realize that the trading was also good, with certain shortcomings, in the city you left behind. Soon younger men say you have lost ambition; older, that you have grown wiser. Then, as you settle, there is comfort, and a kind of sadness."
Thubron turned seventy in June of this year. I wonder if he has found comfort. In any case, to the author honor is due for the expeditions of discovery on which he has served as our consummate guide.
Note: This review is of the Vintage paperback edition (2007).
Not worth the money or rimeI bought this book in preparation of my trip to central Asia, central and western China. The book was palatable -Nothing sensational nor magnificent- until I reached the chapter about Iran. It fell apart and the Author lost his credibility when he started to talk about Iran, A country where I have traveled extensively. He seemed to invent stories to spice up his book, after all he want to sell his book. No Iranian "or any one in this world" will discuss his parents sex life to a total stranger or "any other human being". I can't imagine any Iranian will discuss how his mother lost her virginity. That was really strange. Also It seemed to me that he was writing to please the western reader, to confirm stereotypes. It is hard for me to believe he did not meet a single person who agreed with the Iranian government. He did not come across as some one credible or fair-minded when he talked about Iran.
This book without the Iran chapter deserve 2 star, with the Iran chapter No star.
I would recommend to read another book called "Silk Road: Monks, Warriors & Merchants" by Luce Boulnois ISBN-10: 9622177212
Product Description To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months—out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey—and explored an ancient world in modern ferment.
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